More than just a delicious treat, a cookie made at home "is the easiest way to say I love you," note the editors of Gourmet magazine. And in collecting a representative cookie recipe for each of the magazine's 68 years of publication, they also found homemade cookies are a surprisingly good indicator of America's changing eating and cooking habits. Among the oh-so-tempting recipes here, reprinted exactly as they originally appeared in the magazine, are Cajun Macaroons (1941), Gingerbread Men (1959), Mandelbrot Biscotti (1967), Irish Coffee Crunchies (1977), Pistachio Tuilles (1988), Chocolate Coconut Squares (1997), and Grand Marnier Glazed Pain D'Épice from 2009.

"Now for the first time, the best of Gourmet's recipes, spanning nearly seven decades, have been collected into one book. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."—Sara Moulton